The holy grail: new porous materials with beautiful structures and unparalleled functions

The holy grail: new porous materials with beautiful structures and unparalleled functions

Professor Shane Telfer

Porous materials have fascinated humankind since the Greeks discovered zeolites: stones that could give off water. Of late, a new class of porous crystals has been discovered.

Known as metal-organic frameworks, they have beautiful architectures that can be tuned at the molecular dimension.

The structures and applications of these materials is only limited by the imagination. Can they be used to sequester CO2 directly from air? Is the targeted delivery of bioactive payloads in the human body possible? Find out what we know, and what we hope to find out, about these fascinating materials.